charice is a popstar, she’s not an athlete. she’s not in competition against someone from another country, she isn’t trying to best someone else in a competition against nations, she’s a singer trying to make it and making it in the entertainment industry. she’s a popstar as such she will earn her fandom and the expansion of it the same way other popstars then now and in the future do: by playing to their public who are entitled to their whimsy.
if someone disses her looks and her music (the way people diss miley cyrus or justin bieber) it doesn’t mean that someone is being unpatriotic or racist or has crab mentality. it just means hindi niya type ang ino-offer ni charice as a popstar. do you like KISS? how about Vanilla Ice? April Boy Regino? the SexBomb Album? if you make fun of any of them or profess how much you hate their music or their look–are you being racist or unpatriotic or elitist? do you have crab mentality? of course not. it’s just preference. and we are allowed to be superficial and petty and shallow in our poppish pursuits. it’s entertainment. let your friends tell you you have great or lousy taste in whatever entertains you but let it not be an issue of national importance.
here’s a Pinoy problem which to me is more alarming: why do we need international recognition to validate what we do? is a film less or better because it was accepted in an international festival? why does brilliante mendoza need a cannes trophy to be honored in malacanang? why would our newspapers not feature ken cobonpue before his furniture was noticed by brad pitt and used in a hollywood movie? and why is charice a greater singer simply because she’s sung with celine dion? why is charice worthy of being celebrated any more than any of her contemporaries simply because she went global? what exactly are we honoring and celebrating? her? or being known all over the world through her?
seriously. i’ve long had a problem with that term–world-class. kiss my filipino first, first class ass.
Attended my first press conference as a director for a tv show a couple of days ago. And in true fashion, i completely flubbed on the first question. Never get nervous with the truth, you’ll lose much needed hours of sleep!
I’d like to answer it again, in the best way i know how, through the written word. No one may end up reading this but at least I will feel at peace knowing that my feelings and the way i should have answered is recorded somewhere in cyberspace.
The question was, how was X book adapted to be X show in order to fit A and B actors? The truth of the matter is, X book and X show have almost little to zero similarity.
In the same way the X show took liberties in developing the material, so did X book take liberties in writing itself. Confusing? That’s because X book and X show were developed as one. It’s an original, collaborative work between X book-makers and X show makers. To begin with, the length and breadth of X book is not sufficient material to run for 13 weeks. Necessarily plotlines and character histories have to have enough weight/meat/ story to have legs to stand on for the duration of its pre-determined life span on air, which in our case is 3 months.
With regard to adapting the material to fit A and B actors specifically, the short answer is we didn’t. Because in order for us to realize the full potential of the original story, we could not be hampered by pre-conceived notions of what A and B actors can or cannot do. The material must be given justice, and demanded that it not be boxed in by what people believe to be the capabilities of the heretofore untested A and B actors. So we acted on faith and confidence which is instinct-driven, that whatever story we ultimately come up with, A and B WILL rise and step up to the plate, and deliver what the story demands. The challenge therefore, is greater but the reward, richer. Because we know, and A and B will know in the end that, we did not cut corners or short change the material because we presumed that there is a limit to what they can do as actors. Rather, we jumped with A and B and believed that they could do it, before the proof they actually could.
Good news to A and B fans. We firmly believe after having taped the pilot, that our instincts are right. See you at the take-off.
There are 2 things in this post. An article, written by Patricia Evangelista (one more reason I’m proud to be a Theresian) and a Youtube video also from her public account, which is a plug for the pilot episode of Truths, a new docu-series on ANC.
Both are centered on a subject matter close to my heart: abortion and the larger issue of women’s reproductive health and the spectrum of rights that govern it, either granted or deprived by Philippine law. It’s an extremely sensitive topic and a hotbed for controversy but it is (to me) one of the definitive causes of this generation, maybe even this century.
In this country where we have been programmed to respond in the negative, with aggression and hostility to any opinion that might challenge the status quo determined by the Church, it has never been more important to challenge ourselves and these programmed responses. Not so that our convictions be swayed so easily by rhetoric from another angle, but so that we can, with critical thinking and a complete picture of the reality women live in today, test these convictions if it is wholly and absolutely the right one to stand on.
*AIRING AUGUST 30
Criminal by Pat Evangelista
On paper, the sentence is imprisonment, up to six years. In the dank back rooms of Manila slums, and in the emergency wards of public hospitals, the sentence can be death. In 2008, at least 500,000 women resorted to abortion. 90,000 suffered complication. A thousand died.
The criminal was a woman. They are always women.
In the Republic of the Philippines abortion is illegal. There are no exceptions under the law. It does not matter if the woman’s life is at stake on an operating table in the Fabella Hospital. It does not matter if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, if the expectant mother is a nine-year-old girl in the slums of Tondo, if the fetus is expected to die within the womb and the woman with it.
That the penalty of abortion is often death is not a secret from these women. They know this. They’ve seen it happen. Women who risk death are not concerned with the legality of their actions, they are willing to push the twisted end of a plastic hanger into their uteruses; they believe they have no other choice. They may be afraid of God or death or the arm of the law, but they will carry on. The criminal penalty meant to stop abortion has not stopped millions of women; it has only stopped them from seeking help when they are bleeding into the cheap wood floors of their makeshift homes. Criminalization has pushed them into the streets of Quiapo, outside the Church of the Black Nazarene, where the voices of priests echo in prayer and tablets of Cytotec are sold six for a thousand alongside plaster statues of the Virgin Mary.
Her name is Maricel, she was eighteen and already a mother of one. The year she was granted a visa to work overseas was the same year she discovered she was pregnant again. She induced her own abortion, afraid to lose her chance at employment that paid enough for her family to live. For two weeks she endured infection and vaginal bleeding. Her story ended on the operating table. Doctors said she died of septic shock.
The Republic of the Philippines is one of the last countries in the world that continue to call every instance of termination of pregnancy a criminal act, and because it is, every woman who commits abortion commits it on her own. The Philippines has one of the highest numbers of maternal deaths in the West Pacific Region, 230 dying out of 100,000 live births, as opposed to the regional average of 82. Unsafe abortion is responsible for up to twenty percent of these deaths.
Her name is Josie, twenty-six. She went to an abortionist, who pressed down on her abdomen and thrust a fat hose up her vagina. She was in the clinic a long time. She bled. Some of the blood stank. There was blood on the bedpan, on the sheets, gushing in chunks. The blood was very red. At home, she bled for more than a week. In chunks, in gushes. She thought she would die.
Those who condemn these women point to the woman’s culpability. Whores and sluts, murderers, should have kept their legs closed if they didn’t want a child. Should have abstained. Should have been good, responsible women, should be good mothers, should take responsibility. That most of these criminal women are Catholic, married, uneducated and desperately poor does not matter to many of their critics from Church and laity. Opponents of the Reproductive Health Bill say they oppose the provision of free contraception because to permit it may lead to permitting abortion.
This is Ana, from Manila, a mother of eight, who induced an abortion after her ninth child. She said she could not use family planning, because it was unavailable. A Guttmacher study says that in Manila, where an executive order was issued banning contraception in public health centers, the incidence of abortion is higher than in any other part of the country.
This is Aileen, a mother of five, three of whom were still babies when she aborted the sixth. “Only those who are better off, rich, can talk about abortion as illegal. They have no worries about raising their children… They do not know what it is like to be poor and desperate… Poor women have limited options… Everything I did was for my living children.”
This is the sort of woman they call a bad mother, a criminal who deserves to bleed to death in the corners of hospital rooms. The stigma on abortion coming from its criminalization means that when a woman who suffers after an unsafe abortion finds the courage to go to a hospital, medical personnel believe they have the right to discriminate. There is no such thing as patient confidentiality; no such thing as priority for those who are dying in gushes. The Jason Ivlers of the world can get their confidentiality and medical care after a shootout with the police, but in this country, the woman who aborted is the exception to the Hippocratic oath.
This is Imelda, thirty years old. She was bleeding when she arrived in the Fabella Hospital. The doctors shouted at her. They said they would call the police. They said they would not allow her to leave the hospital if they discovered she had an abortion. She was allowed to bleed without care for four hours, and was interrogated by nine different health workers while she bled.
This is Lisa, and in Gat Andres Bonifacio Memorial Medical Center, they told her she would be arrested if they proved she induced an abortion. They made her sign a document in English, a language she could not understand on paper. A nurse put a notebook-sized sign at the bottom of her bed with the word “abortion.” There was no chart with her name, only that one word.
This is Gina. When the staff of Tondo General discovered she had aborted, she was left alone. Her back was soaked in blood. She wished someone would give her a napkin, a diaper, anything. Nobody did.
This is written in support of the decriminalization of abortion, in the hope that safe abortion will be offered for women in cases of rape and incest and risk to life, that women will no longer be ignored in emergency rooms because of who they are, that contraception will be provided so that no woman will be forced to see abortion as a choice, and that the thousands who choose the risk of back alleys and coat hangers will be called victims instead of criminals.
Call it by its name: abortion. One thousand women died bleeding in 2008, nobody was held accountable, because for some, these women deserved to die. The state holds them down; the Church watches them bleed. The criminals are not always women. The crimes are not always theirs.
They pray, these women. They believe in God, and some of them believe that God is forgiving, that God would understand. They are afraid to say their names, because they do not have the same faith in their fellow men as they do in God.
We don’t owe the world an apology for the existence of Rolando Mendoza. There are criminals in every part of the globe, there are terrorists and airport bombers and hijackers and hostage takers and kidnap for ransoms and students shooting other students across the world.
We don’t have the monopoly on bad. Now hopefully the world remembers that. Not that I care all that much what the world thinks of our country. I love it regardless. I’m a patriot and how the world sees my country is relevant to me only on the level of how it affects our economy and how it affects our people. (Trans.Don’t mistreat our OFWs.)
I’m not ashamed to be a Filipino. One day does not a nation make, nor can one event define who we are as a people and erase all the good we’ve accomplished for ourselves, our country and for countless others across the globe.
One nation is not one person; if it were, no country would be able to hold its head up in the UN.
But there is still a need to say sorry.
I apologize for the ineptitude of our police force and the higher authorities responsible for the training and equipment they obviously did not have. I am sorry for more higher authorities incapable of communicating better via international news, which I am certain you have been glued to, any and all information that might have provided some form of solace for the families of every single person on that bus. It could not have been easy, especially with the sensationalist gusto of our local media’s coverage which likely exacerbated the situation.
I apologize for how ill-prepared and ill-equipped we have proven to be in handling a crisis like what happened yesterday.
I apologize for our seeming insensitivity and inappropriate-ness as we turned our attention less than 24 hours later to the Miss Universe pageant (congrats for being 4th runner up Venus) and said things that may make it appear as if winning the crown will bring back the honor and credibility we lost after our spectacular failure to protect our visitors.
I promise you this isn’t the case. We just like being honored in general, particularly by the people of the world. I’m sure you do too, but understand that we have redefined “world-class” and its importance in our society. The concept of “bringing home the glory” to the Philippines is now the biggest source of our national pride. I know, it doesn’t make sense but we’re crazy like that. We crave international recognition (the good kind) in however way we can get it. That’s why Manny Pacquiao can run for office and win and why we’re so concerned about the impression we make through singers like Charice, that monitoring her progress into Hollywood is news of national importance.
We are an insecure nation and we need to be reminded by the outside world that we are good and worthy and have something to contribute. We have forgotten our own great and noble history as a proud race. I don’t know why. Or maybe I have an idea but that’s a whole other blog post–or textbook. Ours is a not a young civilization but we are taking our sweet time growing out of infancy.
I promise you, we feel the grief of what happened. I sense among my people, an effort to turn away from the horror of what transpired in that bus at that grandstand, by making every effort to move on, even as we process it in a circus like fashion while taking souvenir photos of the crime scene. See, we tend to try to gloss over the bad and jump right into the good. And oftentimes, our zeal to get rid of the negative in the crazed need to”stay positive” makes us forget. But we are wounded by this I assure you and it will be yet another scar etched deep in our psyches which primetime telenovelas and noontime game shows will try their best to heal. It’s our therapy.
Most of all, I am sorry for the way we seem to be more concerned with how this makes us look in the international community than we are about identifying what went wrong. More concerned about our national pride than figuring out where and when processes and protocol — which could have saved the lives of your citizens, HK– broke down.
Investigation is on going. And I understand that what will make this go down a little easier is the assurance that heads will roll and / or policies and police training procedures will be reviewed together with a lot of open dialogue within the media to assess if they could have performed better or not in delivering the news.
I don’t know if that will happen, I promise you I will keep a close watch.
Napa-blog ako bigla kahit supposedly I’m off the grid dahil nagsusulat ako ng pilot ng bagong show.
Nagkamali kasi akong manood ng Bandila, yung late night news program ng ABS. And one particular piece caught my attention fully, as well as my ire.
Simple lang ang gist. Isa sa mga moves ng Malacanang (a ‘yay P-Noy moment as far as I’m concerned) ang paghikayat sa mga mambabatas (for the conyotics, translated as the Palace recently encouraged lawmakers or members of the congress) na i-stop na ang paglalagay ng mga pangalan at picture nila sa mga projects na ginagawa nila sa kanilang mga district.
Matagal ko na ‘tong issue, sa totoo lang.
Kaya nga isa ko sa mga tuwang-tuwa nung marinig ang balita na kasunod ng anti-wang-wang movement ay may anti self-aggrandizement/grandstanding movement para sa mga public servants-cum-celebrity-wannabes na walang kapararakang dini-display ang mga pangalan at litrato nila sa mga schools, waiting sheds, hospital buildings, street signs at roadworks na ginagawa sa kanilang mga distrito.
Matagal na kasi akong nagtataka bakit okay na okay lang sa kultura natin na ginagawang billboard ng mga nasa posisyon ang kahit na anong public surface para ipamalita na ginagawa nila ang mga tungkulin nila. At tuwing may “This Is a Project Of” akong nakikita ang nasa isip ko, humihingi ito ng credit at acknowledgment sa mga constituents nila for doing their job, using their constituents’ money. “Good news po! Ginawa ko po ang pinag-usapan natin! Ito o, kitams?”
Good news ba ito na dapat nating ipagpasalamat? Talaga? Utang na loob.
Ganun na ba ka-cynical ang mga Pilipino? Ganun na kababa ang expectations natin sa gobyerno at sa mga binoboto natin, ganun na tayo kasanay sa masama, sa corrupt, sa mga baluktot na gawaing dinadaan na lang sa birong “onli in the pilipins”–na kapag may tama, tayo pa ang nagpapasalamat? It’s tragic how we’ve been hardwired by bad experience to feel grateful and shower thanks upon those who give us that which we are entitled to in the first place, that which is our right as citizens and that which is their first obligation as elected officials: good, honest public service.
So tonight while watching Bandila I was stunned to see some minority leaders publicly oppose this long-overdue proposal. And oppose it with purpose and conviction as if they were truly the wronged party subjected to the whim of a too-modest President. To quote one (whose name I have forgotten) “Kung si President P-Noy ayaw niya [nilalagay yung pangalan at mukha niya] di ipatanggal nila pero kami kung gusto namin na ilagay ang mga [picture] at pangalan namin sa mga proyekto sa aming mga distrito ‘wag sana kaming pakialaman…lalo na kung guwapo ka o maganda…”
This is GALL defined.
Another congresswoman (whose name I also don’t recall) tried to make a legitimate case for putting their names on their projects. “Transparency” ang silbi ng pag-a-advertise nila ng mga sarili nila, para malaman ng mga constituents na nagtatrabaho sila.
This is BULLSHIT in a nutshell.
Pero at least may isang nagsabi, ang Minority Leader nga yata (whose name escapes me) na admittedly ito ay isa ring form of campaigning. Nag-iimbak na. Built in na nga naman kasi diba, para sa mga susunod na eleksyon.
Ayan. Now this is HONESTY thank you very much. Pero tanggalin na natin yung “isa rin” sa sentence na “isa rin ito sa mga dahilan”. Para MAS honest, MAS accurate to say that ITO LANG NAMAN ang dahilan kung bakit sila umaalma, WALA NANG IBA PA.
Transparency kamo? A job done is a job done. A manhole covered, a road paved, a building constructed–these are the best records of where the taxpayer’s money went and the only proof necessary of a public official’s job accomplishment. Halal na sila, binoto na sila ng taong-bayan natural mente lahat ng mangyari o hindi mangyari during their term ay i a-attribute din sa kanila. Whether pupunahin sa kakulangan o pupurihin sa kahusayan sa pagbibigay serbisyo.
Hindi na kailangan ng physical reminder na nakakapangit lang sa kapaligiran. Ang laki na nga ng carbon footprint natin sa mundo dadagdagan niyo pa.
Transparency talaga? KEEP RECORDS AND MAKE THEM PUBLIC AND TRANSPARENT! Yung talagang puwedeng ma-access ng kahit na sino anumang oras. Kaya nga may munisipyo. Kaya nga may tanggapan ang inyong kagawaran. Hindi kayo makakaubos ng isang ream ng bond paper sa pagpaskil ng mga announcement sa isang cork board na puwede niyong ilagay sa isang prominent corner ng opisina niyo– kung ang layunin niyo lang ay purely to assure your districts that you ARE doing your job and that THIS IS where their taxes are going. Kung gusto niyo maging green and paperless—ANONG GINAGAWA NG INTERNET? Magpagawa kayo ng website o para libre gumawa kayo ng official Facebook Page for your district! Hindi pa ubos ang libreng space sa cyberspace. Ilista dun lahat ng mga ginagawa ng inyong tanggapan. Punuin niyo yun ng picture niyo.
Kung transparency nga ang layunin. Pero gaya nga ng sinabi ko, hindi naman talaga yun ang dahilan kaya umaalma kayo. Utang na loob.
Ego has no space in the realm of governance and public service. Kaya nga hindi ako papasok diyan ever. Kaya nga hindi lahat ng tao kaya gawin yan. Special yan diba. Hindi yan negosyo, industriya or stepping stone for personal advancement. Stripped of the politics, public service is a calling of the noblest kind, an endeavor that is truly selfless and thankless.
And it’s supposed to be that way.
That is the price of the trust the public gives an elected official. Biruin mo, susunod ako sa batas mo at ipapahawak ko sayo ang pera ko. Kasi ang presumption ko, sinagot mo yung tawag ng panunungkulan ng buong puso, that you are pursuing your passion to help your country and fellow citizens.Hindi yun pabor na binibigay mo sa amin. Tama si Noynoy. Kami ang boss niyo. Ngayon, hindi ka ba maiinis kung may empleyado kang humihingi ng papuri o titimbrehan ka tuwing gagawin nito yung trabahong pinagkatiwala mo sa kanya? Ginagawa mo lang yun kung yung trabaho niya ay HIGIT pa sa inasahan mo at sa pinag-usapan niyo. EH HINDI NAMAN GANUN ANG KASO DITO MGA KUYA. AT ATE.
It’s an honor in itself to serve your country. And if you do it right the reward you reap is the genuine love of a grateful nation at the end of your service. In the meantime, you don’t ask for recognition, you EARN IT.
Hindi utang na loob ng constituents ang paggawa niyo ng trabaho, dear minority leaders opposing this notion from Malacanang. Utang niyo yun sa amin. Utang na loob.
(Ngayon…maghahanap ako ng public service project baka dun ko makita yung mukha nung mga konggresistang quoted dito na hindi ko na maalala ang mga pangalan.)
